A Discreet Imbalance of Power
by Father Vengeance
Summary: A tale in which The Mistress Spanks Twice (2x16) finds it dynamic flopped and Kate Beckett finds herself...decidedly curious about her partner's secret proclivities. M for the obvious implications, some unlikely characterizations in the name of fun, but mostly for Beckett's potty-mouth and smutty brain. Which I wrote for her. Hmm. M for Me. Happy 2019 #Castle Pornado y'all.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Just this: enjoy~**

* * *

In the same way that one looked at a brooding sky and deduced an impending downpour, Katherine Beckett took one glimpse of the woman who had been suspended from the monkey bars in her underwear and braced for precipitation of filthy comments and lewd suggestions.

The first glance her tag-along spared to the body was hard to miss for all it lacked by way of the man's typical wealth of curiosity and macabre exuberance. It wiped his expression blank. Every amused crinkle common to the edges of those cerulean eyes crystallized into clarity and smoothness. The bitter chill of the early March morning had nothing on it.

In a way, Castle went on to fulfill Beckett's initial expectations with a few strokes of peripheral commentary. Lanie's personal observations prompted a latched grasp and feigning dumbfounded in the query to Ryan: _Does she know that we can hear her? _The single line of bemusement at Beckett's forehead waned. She decided her pre-caffeinated brain had fed her unreliable data.

"Caramel, huh?" Ryan tilted his head some at the prone victim. "Maybe the doer has a sweet tooth in addition to liking bondage and public play."

"At the very least, it seems safe to assume that he's no casual fetishist," Richard said by way of agreement and crouched to run his gloved fingertips along the cuffs that had been latched around the victim's wrists. He opened the pliable catch on each to further glimpse their design.

Beckett's gaze automatically slid to the medical examiner. The other woman was staring back at her, dark eyes widened slightly in bewilderment. They shot mutual suspicious glances at the man.

"Why do you say that?" Ryan asked.

_Thank you. Yeah, Big Rick, why?_

The author didn't notice the added scrutiny. He was already cast adrift upon that oceanic imagination, seeking currents by which to merge evidence and theory. The distant quality in his voice gave it away. "This is full-grain leather—top tier. Most manufacturers use lower quality and compensate with an overabundance of cheap lining. Also, the stitching is too elaborate for machine work. It's a custom piece."

Lanie flicked her gaze back to Kate and mouthed the words: _Custom piece?_

Beckett shrugged, equally baffled.

Normality returned for a time as the M.E. shared additional information about the condition of the body. Ryan and Esposito called them away afterward and tag-teamed a bit of show-and-tell around the park, pointing out unusable footprints and tracks from a rolling suitcase. Having Castle muse aloud about the conflicts of behavior between an elaborate staging of the scene versus a passionate cause of death was almost enough to forget the points of unusualness.

It was until the boys lamented their lack of clear direction to start investigating from.

Then Castle added, "We have the restraints for now. Get a detailed picture of the stitching. That's almost as good as a signature for whoever made it. It shouldn't be hard to track down; BDSM shops in this city comprise a small, closely-knit community and only a handful do commission work."

Sadly, the boys didn't share Kate's consternation for the sexual proclivities implied by the mystery writer's knowledge of the subject matter. _Dammit._ Her peers took the data and ran minus any further digging on her behalf. It's not like they weren't given ample opportunity to step up either. Perusing a website full of BDSM devices at the precinct later should have been more than enough to open a line of inquiry. _Illegal in twelve states indeed._ _Who even knows that?_

"Those two were gawking at a picture on some website," Kate complained to Lanie at the OCME office later, "asking how the subjects could even get into their positions which, admittedly, was a pretty advanced form of sixty-nining. It looked like the guy was holding the woman in the air upside down and backward by her waist. She had her thighs draped over the guy's shoulders around his face and her upper half was bowed around like a 'C' with her cheek nestled into his crotch. Anyway, Castle takes one glance up from his phone and says it's a sex swing. No giggling. No colorful add-on. No nothing. They might as well have asked what time it was. It was a swing advertisement, of course. The site photoshopped out the wires and positioned the guy's hands at her waist to conceal the harness and make it look like a more clever product than it is. Thing is, you wouldn't know that unless you understood the position and its extreme unlikelihood without a support mechanism. But do either of them question Castle picking up on that so fast? Hell no. All they could do was ooh and ahh like drooling, bumbling numbskulls. They're the worst unwitting proxies ever, I swear."

It wasn't until after the tirade ran its course that Kate sensed her friend wasn't getting in on the indignation with the same enthusiasm. She turned from the length of floor space she'd been prowling and fixed her besty with a bemused frown.

Lanie shone a deadly smile back at her.

_Uh-oh._

Kate managed not to wince. "What?"

"Oh, I think you know what. I mean, damn. I'm curious. You're fu-fu-fu-furious," she concluded with a mocking stutter for effect and giggled afterward, entirely too pleased with herself.

"Well," Beckett began lamely with a shift of weight from one hip to the other, "it kinda offends my sensibilities as a fellow investigator, y'know? I can't help it."

An inelegant scoff issued from the back of the other woman's throat. "I believe the second part."

"Look, whose side are you on here?"

Lanie shook her head and turned the chair outward at her desk. Its aged joints gave a squeal as the woman settled in facing her companion. "I think I'm more surprised that you're a little shaken up about Castle having kinks. Name one person we know who possesses more latitude for exploring them."

"I'm not surprised exactly. Everyone has kinks. But he didn't say anything about that and he hasn't since either."

"Is that what bothers you? Or is it that he didn't ask anything for once—about you?"

"Huh. See, that's a great point. This is weirder than I thought."

Lanie's gaze ventured to one side in contemplation. "He's not exactly an open book in general, is he? I mean, with the real stuff. I feel like you've mentioned that before."

"I have and he isn't," Kate grumbled. "The scales between the meaningful information he asks of me versus what he offers in return is so far out of balance by now it's more of a vertical line pointing down at a sucker." She raised an arm to point illustratively at the top of her head.

The other rocked with humor. "At least he's consistent."

"C'mon. You don't find this a little weird?"

"Honey, he shares a helluva lot less with everyone who _isn't_ you. What's strange is that you're allowing the imbalance to slide. Open up that pretty mouth hole and do something about it. But, hey, I give you a lotta brownie points for owning up to at least being curious in the first place."

Beckett started to huff at the woman's teasing but stopped. She frowned, shifting the arms crossed at her sternum against a sudden pricking of concern. "Really?"

"What?"

"Do I convey such a lack of interest in him that it's surprising it exists?"

Her besty ably intuited the underlying twinge of self-crimination. She started to inject an automatic denial by way of reassurance but likewise halted mid-stride. Plump lips resealed. She considered again and her expression was swept into remorseful confirmation. A moment later she added, "In fairness, anytime you encourage the man to take an inch it tends to become a country mile. Look what happened after you told him about your Mom."

Beckett sighed as well, but the reminder provided didn't kindle the same anger it once had. "Y'know, looking back at that now, I feel like Castle's the first person to breach that barrier with a desire to see me gain closure rather than looking like a hero to me for doing what I couldn't. Even with Will, I could tell my past lent me something of a damsel semblance in his estimation. Not too much. It was subtle. But it was there."

Lanie said nothing. Bless her.

"Good intentions don't excuse going behind my back. It's just…" Kate stopped, not knowing what else to add. So she didn't. "That's kinda my point though. After everything that's happened between us, I can't have him thinking that I'm not even…" Shit. Words failed her again.

"Interested?" Lanie provided smugly.

"Curious," Kate corrected with another shift of her weight. It graduated into motion, ferrying her to an eventual set of her butt on an open corner of the M.E.'s desk. The resolute shelf of the detective's shoulders rounded into a little slump. "I can't have Castle of all people thinking that, Lanie, jeez. There're limits to my hypocrisy."

"What the heck does _that _mean?"

Beckett meant his books. Castle's writing had intruded upon the desolation of her grief long before the author initiated a literal and less graceful attempt of the same. Few characters or plot twists he created were one-sided things. Every tale was complicated if one looked closely. That was his real marvel to her as a storyteller: he satisfied both shallow and deep readers with the same strokes of narrative. Kate was definitely the latter, and because she had looked for more and consistently found it, slowly but surely the younger version of herself had gone from asking 'What does it even matter anymore?' to asking instead: 'Doesn't it still matter?' Maybe to some that wouldn't seem like a terribly dramatic shift of perspective but, for Kate, it had been downright pivotal at the time.

"Honey?"

The investigator focused on her friend and offered a wan smile. "Nothing. Nevermind."

"Girl, I'mma smack you."

Kate expelled a gust of humor as she arose and straightened her top to a smoother lie. "You've prodded plenty already, trust me. It's good," she concluded softly with a shift of her gaze to the other from beneath the downward angle of her brow. "Thanks. I think I know what I need to do."

"What you need to do is share with the class. Don't leave me confused."

"Gotta go," the detective lilted airily on her way to the door. "See ya."

The squawk slipped out through the lessening sway of the morgue's double doors in the detective's wake. "You suck!"

"That's not what I'm planning," Kate chided amusedly. "Love ya, pervert."


	2. Chapter 2

Beckett paused at the door to give her partner a waist-to-face sweep of her gaze. "Do you need to put your hands in your pockets before we go inside?"

Castle turned his squinted focus from the sidewalk at his left to soak her in cerulean pools. He lifted an eyebrow as the wind stroked through the coppery hair at his brow and asked in kind, "Would you be able to trust that they were behaving in my pockets, out of sight and oh-so idle?"

_Grrrr. _The images he put in her head. It only worked because he narrowly deviated from the accepted form of the age-old idiom: idle hands are the devil's workshop. If he'd said that she would've automatically discarded any associated imagery. Making her get there on her own got her gears spinning and he damn well knew it, the dink.

"Y'know," she returned dryly, "you say the word 'behave' like you have any real appreciation for it. Did you mean to say behoove? Beehive? Behead?" Kate didn't wait for his broad grin to become another rejoinder. The door she attempted to pull ajar didn't...go. What the f—oh. It was push not pull. _Ahem._ She squared her shoulders and pressed smoothly into The Love Shackle, flatly ignoring the amusement she knew resided upon the lips of the man following after.

The world slanted towards black and white. Cream toned walls and rack after rack of ebony clothing. Leather, vinyl, lace. Corsets, skirts, bodysuits. Spike-heeled shoes. Ankle-length boots and ones that ascended to upper thigh. It was a pleasant medium inside but it felt a little stifling walking around with her shadow casually perusing nearby. It smelled like spiced coffee, leather, and faintly of the oils used to preserve the longevity of the products. She didn't see an attendant on duty.

Castle taunted her about finding a gift for an imaginary boyfriend. Beckett answered back by showcasing a gimp mask and zipping it shut to punctuate a verbal warning to hush. He smirked. She tried not to imagine whether he'd be game for wearing the item or not. And she really, _really _tried not to notice the practiced ease with which the paddle rolled over the wrist and through the thick fingers of his right hand, once, twice, thrice.

_Ohhhh boy. I did not just see that. Out! Get out of my head._

Rick followed her fixed stare to its source, blanched in realization, and set the paddle to one side as if it had sprouted thorns. The fact that he was so quick to conceal…

Kate's eyes narrowed and her lips came slightly apart with the question about his familiarity with BDSM wet upon her tongue, poised to drip. Barry, the shop owner, chose that penultimate moment to show his face with a genial smile and warm welcome.

The world corrected upon its axis of normality and the case flowed onward from there.

In the wake of The Love Shackle, they made a steady series of other visits: the boyfriend Ryan and Espo delivered to the precinct, the roommate waiting alone and inconsolable at the vic's home address. It wasn't a long list of notifications, which was both a little sad and a relief.

Perhaps the lack of further devastated loved ones could be blamed for Beckett's ability to cling to the pin-point of curiosity she bore towards her partner in crime-solving. It glowed faintly at the back of her mind all morning and midday, a steadily burning vigil that was always _just _apparent when she glanced up. A lure of consideration winking through her efforts like the yellowish incandescence of a wary traveler's lantern peeking between the trunks of a forest dimmed to nighttime black.

After leaving Hudson University weighted down with their victim's thesis notes, Beckett decided to stop at Remy's on the way back to the Twelfth for a recharge. Castle voiced no complaint. They demolished a pair of cheeseburgers and homestyle french-fries. She sucked down an Oreo shake in blatant refutation of the winter chill and didn't regret a single delicious slurp. They wallowed in the stuff-bellied afterglow for several minutes, watching the traffic move past the nearby window.

"So," Beckett eventually issued by way of an admittedly lame opener.

"So," Castle fired back mildly, but immediately. Expectancy ruled his rugged features.

_Damn. You've been waiting for this, haven't you?_ The detective's gaze drifted apart as her features crinkled in a ripple of displeasure for being intuited ahead of time. How the heck he managed that feat she couldn't fathom. Her poker-face was legit. Even Castle had conceded as much before and she knew the difference between legitimacy and him blowing smoke up her caboose. _Well, whatever. Let him see it coming then. It wasn't supposed to be a surprise anyway._

She faced him squarely across the table and posed candidly, "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not especially," her companion rumbled and his chest rose and fell afterward with a mute sigh. "I don't suppose that's going to stop you from asking though."

Kate smirked and performed a casual shrug. "I could be persuaded."

"You would deeply regret attempting a second milkshake."

"Ugh, damn it. I _know_. Why is it still so tempting?" She listed to one side upon the red cushioned seat in a feigned and bodily fling of despondency.

A gleaming flash of Rick's smile appeared along with a rock of that upper half in mirth. "Go ahead and ask. Really," he cemented with a slim nod of verification at her glance. "You don't push back often. It seems only fair to oblige when these occasions present themselves."

_Pfft. This time maybe._ What did that make every other occasion she'd attempted the same? Wait. Did that mean she could've gotten away with pressing the point about his fascination with murder and his prior marriages? _Duly noted. I won't forget it._

Beckett's gaze lowered to the glass of water on the table before her. She idled a moment, contemplating while using the straw to push the ice around in tinkling notes. Wasted moments, truly. The first question could only ever have been the most hotly burning one. "Are you submissive or dominant?"

"I dom."

"I fucking knew it," Beckett hissed, scandalized and yet invigorated as if she'd been zapped with an electric charge. She almost trembled from the tingle of confirmation coursing through her veins, the same texture of epiphany which accompanied every case at the defining moment of full comprehension.

Castle was eyeing her dubiously. "You knew? How?"

She'd arisen within her seat into a rigid line. The detective forced herself to simmer down and relax against the booth. "Our initial introduction was between a writer and a reader."

"Yes." He frowned slightly. "And?"

Beckett lifted one shoulder. "And what? You're the author. You know what you do."

"I'm not—" he paused when their waitress approached the table and went groping at a back pocket for his wallet. _Got that all right? You need any help—aw, nope, you're good. _He handed over a credit card to compliment Beckett's cash contribution.

"Keep the change," the detective said and smiled in the wake of the young woman's thanks.

When the server departed, Rick folded his arms upon the surface between them and continued, "I'm not, ah, fishing for compliments or anything. Writing is almost instinctive and so it's strangely disconnected from pride or ego. It's a weave of purposeful selection and subconscious streams. A need that builds over time and circumstance until, sooner or later, I have to open the floodgates and let the words spill out. Editing—now that's a different story. Quite literally," he noted with a slight lift of his eyebrows. "I write for myself; I edit for my readers. That's the golden rule. Within the latter half of that equation is where I refine any stylistic choices in terms of metaphoric parallels and their progressions or similar expressions of theme, mood, and tone. The swarming mass of subtler underpinnings," he summarizes and looks up to receive her nod of understanding before going on. "The point is, by the end of the process I've told several versions of the story. Sometimes the differences are pretty dramatic. So when you make an observation like the one you just did, it's…not so clear a message to me as you might imagine."

_Phew. _Kate had never found the right occasion to question his creative process. It sounded just as visceral and dark as she'd always imagined it to be, more like a way to stave off a kind of creative madness than an act of logic or business. "That's fair," she uttered at length. "It's—" It was her turn to stop abruptly. The waitress was perceptive. She eased in, left the little black binder on the table, and bid them a good day without waiting around to necessitate a reply.

There was something appealing about the way her partner sign his name at the bottom of the bill. Fluidity alluded to a wealth of experience, which in turn outstripped the act in-and-of-itself and implied the same experience to...so many other wonderful things. It made Kate think of how he'd unconsciously handled the paddle earlier and she willed herself not to blush from the comparison. _If you had your way, I'd probably be reddened on top and bottom._

"Go on," Castle invited when she failed to.

Her voice was an embarrassingly high-pitched chirp. "Huh?"

The novelist blinked at her. He arched an impatient eyebrow and pursed his lips.

"Oh," Beckett recalled aloud and huffed in relief. "Uh. Right. Dominance." Kate met his gaze again with a smirk that was half-expected to send his attention fluttering off elsewhere. It didn't. _Yum._ "Every writer has their own unique style or voice. Yours doesn't scream dominance, per se, but it sure as hell isn't submissive. I guess that's why I was surprised by the idea of you being involved in something like," she spared a swift glance about them, "BDSM in the first place. It's hard to picture you either way."

It was Castle's turn to smirk. "I hope you're at least entertained by trying."

_Fuuuck my brain and big mouth._

By some unlikely stroke of wit, she managed not to flinch. "See? This is why."

"I can't believe we're even talking about this," Castle stated, seeming torn between amusement and disbelief. "Aren't we breaking a cardinal rule here?"

"We're probably hedging a line," Beckett acknowledged with a discomfited shift in her booth. The cushion gave a little moan of friction that sounded annoyingly like flatulence.

Castle looked at her with a flick of his eyebrows and deadpanned, "Honeymoon's over, huh?"

Kate laughed. Oh gosh. She almost peed. He killed her sometimes. Thank goodness Rick smiled too before the end. It made her feel a little less like a silly kid.

"You're familiar with the lifestyle," she finally managed to gasp out while wiping evidence of mirth from her eyes. "That makes you a more useful resource than usual." The man's eyebrows soared. She could almost hear the unspoken: _Usual, huh? Can I get that in writing_? Kate squinted at his show of surprise until it waned completely. "Don't joke about that," she snipped. "Anyway, in this case, yeah, I'm inclined to ask. It doesn't mean you gotta answer."

"I'm not exactly a viable resource to tap in that respect. My forays into BDSM haven't exactly been typical. I carved my own path through it."

"What do you mean?"

Castle opened his mouth to answer, remained poised for an instant, and then deflated with a helpless sigh. "That's not really a subject fit for lunchtime brevity."

Beckett channeled her inner Lanie with a dubious, "Mmhmm." She lifted a palm from the table in concession and added, "We'll come back to that another time." _That's a goddamn promise._ "For now, I'm just gonna point out that you've already been useful. All the progress we made today hinged upon tracking down a pair of restraints. Look where it led us. If that's the extent of what you can offer up as we go, fine. But we've talked about it some now, so if other details come to mind later, I hope you won't hold back." Castle smiled slightly. "Right, true," she grumbled. "That's not exactly a wall you often strike nose-first, is it? Still, you've been quiet throughout this situation."

"It's a touch more personal," he defended.

"Mhm," Beckett hummed again, unimpressed. "Isn't sharing the gritty details of yourself fun?"

Castle grumbled wordlessly and looked away, which in turn made her grin. He pretended to be unaware of it.

"C'mon. Let's get back to the house. We've got a trunk full of boxes to plow through."


	3. Chapter 3

Richard Castle ceased their impromptu game of tag around the interview room table and jabbed a finger sharply at the phone nearby upon it. "You call them back and cancel that appointment this instant."

Beckett couldn't help a little snort as she slipped away her cell. "Is this your bossy side then? Needs work."

That comment wiped his expression clear and suffused widening blues with outrage. It straightened his spine and lowered that proud chin into a stern shelf of potential reprisal that, ah, helped her decide to not be flippant anymore. For the moment. _You mustn't anger the messenger of the caffeine Gods, Katie. Not until you've fully conquered the mysterious technology of his espresso machine._

The detective cleared her throat and reasoned, "They're not gonna make time for an officer of the NYPD, Castle. It's a business that's built on maintaining confidences. Getting a warrant for their client records would be a pain in the ass. Mistress Venom might be willing to help us circumvent a lot of red tape."

Chilled attention held hers for a pair of silent seconds. He sighed and said, "Damn it."

"We're settled then?"

"Far from it," he groused. "You can't just serve me up on a platter. I don't sub," he expounded before Kate could object again. The tone he adopted wasn't one of petulance or complaint. It flowed closer to that writer-voice which accompanied the man's theoretical narratives and lectures of unsought edification. "They're going to realize as much for themselves. It's not something I can conceal because it's not something I intentionally broadcast in the first place. Mistress Venom is a dom too, remember? And, from her notes, I gather she isn't a switch—uh, she doesn't engage submissive _and_ dominant roles," he explained to her furrowed brow. "They won't pair me up with someone like that."

Beckett stewed a moment. "We can't just talk our way past the obstacle? We have before."

"This is different in a number of ways. There's an interview process for newcomers that's designed to filter participants toward staff members who suit them best. Ideally, it also weeds out overly-aggressive types. You don't just make an appointment and then trundle blindly on into a session."

She winced and complained, "This is a fine time to mention that."

"I tried beforehand," he snapped.

"Jeez, Castle. Try harder next time. What the hell are we gonna do?"

"There's only one thing _to _do, detective." He didn't look amused. "Embrace your inner sub."

Kate's eyebrows shot aloft and she shook her head into a wild dance of dark hair. "Oh, hell no. You better figure out a friggin' alternative. I'm no sub either."

Her shadow tilted his head, issued a considering, "Hmm."

Beckett crossed her arms and stared him down in flat annoyance. "You disagree." Her tone made it sound like a statement. It wasn't. She was surprised he'd even suggest such a thing. "You of all people. The guy who writes my fictional counterpart as nothing short of badass and anything but weak."

"Submissiveness is not weakness."

Beckett said nothing.

"I'm serious," her companion reaffirmed while shifting under her lasting scrutiny. "That's a deeply flawed association. There's a reason for the stigma you sometimes hear regarding powerful men and women who prefer being dominated in private. That isn't an urban legend. It's a facet of human nature. We're contradictory creatures who often yearn for experiences that let us step outside of our daily lives or comfort zones."

"You don't think working in a male-dominated profession fulfills that fucking quota for me on a daily basis?"

Castle's shoulders twinged deeply. He strode around to her side of the table and lowered his voice while explaining, "I'm sure that's true. More than I want to guess," he added with an angry rock of his jaw in its set. "And if the idea really bothers you that much, I'm willing to attempt the subterfuge. I wouldn't forego a shot at justice on behalf of my pride. You trust me that much, don't you?"

He didn't wait for an answer, as if concerned what hers might be. That...stung more than a smidge. _Obviously, I trust you, dammit. Do you really need to ask?_

"All I'm trying to convey," Castle went on calmly, "is the option I think is most likely to work. The staff members who populate BDSM clubs are either people who underwent specialized training or possess an innate affinity for cold-reading clients based on things like body language, speech patterns, and microexpressions. The House of Pain is a prominent fixture in Dungeon Alley. They might require a check in both of those boxes to work there. They won't be easy marks."

"Okay. I get why it might not work for you. That doesn't strike you as a problem for me too?"

"Well, again, that's...tricky." He winced when she started to object and raised his hands slightly in placation. Kate allowed it. "Submissives choose their role for a wide variety of reasons. For some, it's a thinly veiled reversal of power. Technically, yes, they're taking orders and doing another person's bidding, but they operate in their selected role secure in the knowledge that their dom would have nothing without them. Do you see what mean?"

"I… Kinda?"

"Hmm. Let me explain it this way then: being a Dom is no small investment of time and energy. It demands a lot of consideration, communication, and imagination. The line between boring your sub or pushing them too far can be as narrow as a razor edge. It isn't easy to navigate the dynamic in a way that consistently fulfills your partner. It's a lot of planning and thinking on your feet."

"Huh. I hadn't really thought about it like that."

"Okay, so, given that fact, who do we say really possesses the other? Dom or Sub?"

"Alright, I perceive the conundrum," Beckett conceded in a grumble. "Just...move along. This conversation is making my skin crawl." It wasn't in an entirely negative way either, which was all the more reason to grab the topic and fling it hastily across the room. Or the hemisphere.

"That's just one example. Some subs get off on feeling needed. Others enjoy basking in a level of attention they don't get otherwise."

"Neither of which I feel overly moved by," the detective pointed out dryly. _Maybe a little._

Her partner hesitated, moistened his lips, and finally sighed in seeming defeat before concluding, "Some people select a submissive role because it fulfills the marked absence of a lasting, reliable, and independent fixture in their everyday lives. They suffer a lack of trust which enables those kinds of relationships, for whatever reason, and there are typically oceans of that quality between Doms and their Subs." He paused to meet her eyes. "It's intrinsic."

_Whoa. You just got called da-fug out, Katie._

Beckett was speechless. She went from stunned to intensely pissed in about two seconds flat. "You assumptive, manipulative, _incorrigible_—

Castle's palm conformed to the curve of her left cheek. It was gentle. Warm.

_Ohmygod!_ Beckett jerked back with a wide-eyed gasp and just about leapt straight out of her skin.

The other's focus cradled her through the sudden shift between fire and ice without expression. Placidity ruled as his arm lowered back to his side. He didn't reclaim the distance she put between them, but neither did he retreat. His voice slid beneath her ire and shock like molten rivers seeping into the cracks beneath violently shifting fault lines, snugly suffusing all the empty spaces. "Pretend for a moment that every previous assurance I've given you is true: that I hold you in no less esteem as an officer and a woman than you credit to me as an author and a man. Wouldn't an estimation like that allow me to appreciate the imperfections you perceive within yourself as things which enhance the rest of you by their contrasts rather than despoil you by any associated negativity?"

_Oof!_ _Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. _It wasn't just something she'd read on a dedication page anymore. He'd stated it baldly. Different words, same message, and no conveniently placed difference of opinion presented itself to mar it. He'd _looked her in the eyes_ and said it. She was goddamn dumbfounded. Words? No.

Kate shook her head against the glass wall of the interview room which was pressed cooly against her back, willing her stupor to lift.

Castle advanced straight into her limited room to breathe. It felt like some internal mechanism turned upon immense cogs in direct response to his proximity, thunking and clanking while laboriously winding her chest tighter and tighter, bringing together the immense enclosure of protective walls. Not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. She heard her elbows bump against the barrier behind her, felt her fingers arise in a deeply uncharacteristic splay of surrender at her sides. _No more. Please._

"You think about it," her partner rumbled without so much as a blink to relieve the connection of their gazes, though hers fell to the nearness and the motion of his mouth as he did so. Those dusky cushions came together at a plump line of seeming consternation. She could feel the minute vibrations of his voice resonating subtly in her bones when he resumed. "I need to change. Whichever method you decide on, I'll be back in an hour."

He left.

A deluge of oxygen swept into the space he abandoned. Beckett sucked it down dazedly, bent at the waist with one shaky palm at her knee bracing her supportively. The other hand lifted to push tendrils of escaped hair backward from her brow. The skin of her forehead was almost feverishly warm to the touch. _What the hell just happened?_


	4. Chapter 4

Beckett used the time in which Rick was gone to start filling out the paperwork that would hopefully be needed later to break through Lady Irena's legal barriers. The mechanical familiarity of the task helped settle her nerves. Some. The major blank spot that remained afterward was the field provided for describing just cause for the warrant. In the time it took to ponderously sip away a cup of coffee, Kate wondered what, if anything, might end up being typed in later. She hoped for their victim's sake it turned out to be something worthy of the time and trip. _And enough to justify the personal aggravation._

A fall of shadow across her desk and the faint waft of enticing cologne brought the detective's attention up to her returning partner.

_So far so worth it._

Designer jeans had been traded for tailored black slacks and a casual grey dress shirt for one with crisper lines in pristine white. The latter nearly shone against the darkness of a jacket that contoured broad shoulders in bold lines and clasped either bicep with a severity suitable to such criminal appeal. It thinned out just right along the trunk, emphasizing the slimness of masculine hips. An unbuttoned and tie-less neck breathily murmured _casual perfection_ in her ear and dragged hazel eyes down from a lightly stubbled jaw into a glimpse of clavicles dappled with faint shadows under panels of UV lighting. The well-muscled rise of pectoral shelves were barely apparent below that within the narrow wedge of unsealed fabric. The right swell shifted beneath his shirt even as she was looking at it.

"Jeez," Beckett issued under her breath and ripped her attention away.

Castle looked up from sealing a cuff link at one wrist to frown at her. "What was that?"

"No, uh, nothing." She stood and slid her coat off the back of her chair. An unwitting dip of her gaze found him turning to go and the motion… _You dress to the right, huh? Good to know. So, did you wanna kill me here and now, or later?_ "Let's...let's roll. Yeah." If she had been blushing somewhat, no one would have noticed. Any wayward stare that found them ended up trailing after the debonaire figure Kate ushered along ahead of her.

There was a certain fascination attached to watching the transformation her partner underwent between one place and the other. His tendency to fidget eased away like the sun dipping towards the western verge. He didn't exactly acquire rigidity, but shed any slouching. That oft-wandering gaze began to find longer rests at fixed points and rely more on peripheral awareness. Physically speaking, it hardly even qualified as a transition. No one looking who didn't know him the way Kate did would be likely to discern a difference. All of the elements present had been before at one time or another. They didn't usually manifest together, that's all, and they certainly didn't stick around for prolonged visits. The most dramatic change occurred somewhere within her passenger. It wasn't like he donned a suit, an intimidating scowl, and an entirely new persona. It was subtler, simpler, and all the more disarming for something that couldn't be casually pinpointed.

"What's the plan?" he asked after several silent blocks.

Beckett shook her head and slowed to a cessation beneath a red light. Her elbow had been braced upon the driver's side window edge, bent to allow her nails to pluck agitatedly at her lower lip. They lifted away to permit a waspish, "You ask as if we even had options. That's quite the one-eighty from what you claimed earlier."

"I told you that we could try to fool them."

"Yeah, while also pointing out how unlikely it would be to succeed."

"If you don't like choosing between bad options," he fired back at her with deadly calm, "then don't put yourself in the position where only those are present."

_Oh hell no you didn't._

Beckett gaped a moment, and then growled back, "So this is _my_ fault?"

"You'd prefer that I shoulder the blame for you placing a hasty phone call?"

_Yes, asshole! I mean no. I mean...shit. Can't you just do it anyway for the sake of my sanity?_

"I don't feel inclined to assign fault either way," her shadow replied, unaware or unheeding of her inner discombobulation. "It is what it is. All that's left is to discern our way through the obstacle. This isn't about us. It's about Jessica Margolis."

"Whoa." The croaked issuance escaped without direct permission from her brain.

"What?" Castle returned with a furrow in his brow.

"Don't," she returned crisply. "Just don't, okay? I don't need a lecture from anyone about maintaining the victim as the cynosure of my motivations for this or any case." Her passenger winced, a thing that encompassed the width of his eyes and nothing more. "Maybe you didn't mean for it to come out that way, but that's what it sounded like to me. I'll be damned if I'll sit here and listen to it."

"I think that speaks to the real problem we're confronting right now, detective." He was looking out the passenger window, maybe to lend what privacy was available. "You automatically assume I'm on the attack. You perceive in me these ulterior motives to tear you down. That couldn't be further from the truth."

"Jeez," she expelled exasperatedly. "Are we just blurting out whatever the fuck we want today?"

Unbelievably, the man's shoulders rocked with a mute laugh. His gaze returned to her like an arrow loosed from a bow. Bullseye. "Just imagine: if you really were my sub, this would be the norm."

_Oof!_ The roles that were awaiting them at the House of Pain had been implied for a while by then, but neither of them had actually said it aloud. Sub. Barring a last-minute swerve into oncoming traffic, she was going to be pretending to be Richard Castle's sub in less than an hour. An inner thrumming of excitation made Kate feel as if they'd just gone barreling over a hill and whooshing down its incline. It wasn't a disturbance she felt in her belly. _Oh boy. Oh, go away._ Suddenly she was aware of the texture her shirt against her skin, the way it whispered against her softness. She could feel the cups of the bra hugging her breasts.

"May I ask you something?"

Somehow, she managed a nonchalant, "Shoot."

"Are you ashamed of the idea of being sexually aroused in my presence?"

_Wooooow._ Kate splattered a palm against her face and willed the entire world to explode.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." A peek between the splay of her ring and pinky fingers revealed her partner's expression. Damn. He conveyed a level calm but she knew the answer had stung him. A honking horn behind them prompted her to heed the change of the traffic light.

"I'm not ashamed," she replied moments later, which was kinda true. "It's just a pretty gargantuan leap to be talking about this with you, Castle."

"Of course. It is for me too."

"Yeah, well, you seem to be a natural," she muttered.

Castle quivered lightly with mirth. "I've been down this road before. It would be easier for me to some extent. Though, frankly, I never thought I'd be walking down it again and certainly not alongside you." Beckett shot a sideways glance at him. "I mean that in the sense that you'd ever oblige," he clarified, "not because I wouldn't find your company entirely appealing."

"Whoa, okay." Beckett had to pause around a slithering inner emptiness lapping hungrily at her erotic core. _Fill me. _She cracked her window. "Thanks, I think," she managed, which would've made her wince for its inaneness had she an ounce of consideration to spare. "Look, can you just, uh, gimme a rundown of what to expect? What's gonna be expected of me?"

"And spoil the surprise?" True baritonal depth and a sneaking vein of cold defiance insinuated itself into the otherwise mundane words like a stiletto being sheathed between the ribs. It plunged deeply. It provoked all kinds of mental imagery which substituted infinitely better intrusions.

Beckett realized her mouth was open and snapped it shut with a clack of her teeth. _Ow._

She started to get pissed off again. Because, damn it, who the heck was Richard Castle to turn the tables on her? _Screw that._ He's the one who should be groveling at her feet. He should be smattering her heels with appreciative smooches for even _glimpsing _an opportunity to...to...

Ugh! Kate's eyes slammed shut around the idea of him looming tall and strong over her. Commanding her. Staring down at her knelt form like an immovable pillar of all the masculine traits she favored and none of those which made it ugly. Looming and yet equally captivated, similarly shorn by his adoration for every curve of her body, every facet of her mind, every darkly glimmering facet of her tortured soul. She desired him brought equally low. To his knees. To his belly. To a trembling shatter.

The sedan was an oven despite the streaming sliver of incoming winter air at her window. And Kate was a mass of gooseflesh that had nothing at all to do with temperature. Her skin sang with the longing for the satisfying pressure a man's weight atop her. Anywhere. Everywhere. Her fingers tightened around the wheel instead of gripping the meaty girth of a worthy pair of biceps.

"BDSM is about letting yourself escape the confines of your rational mind." The returning, sonorous flow of Rick's voice dropped her eyelids to half-mast. Kate ripped them apart. "For a little while anyway. You allow yourself to believe that you're entitled to a little break from all of your normal moral stances or prideful high ground. You can still be all of those things while also indulging in behavior that contradicts them. The goal isn't to subverting the qualities of yourself which you find comfort in or the ones you utilize to establish a sense of identity. When you let yourself play a role which contrasts them, it's an affirmation of all those things. Proof, if you will, that who you truly are is worth the cost it demands to maintain the rest of the time."

Damn. That sounded surprisingly appealing. Beckett swallowed. "It's always sounded more like a thinly veiled excuse to be debased."

Castle nodded, which was not encouraging, but he went on afterward. "Sometimes it turns out to be exactly that. Worse still, some people lose themselves to the thrills of the illusion. They grow attached to their Sub or Dom rather than the freedoms they enjoy as those alter egos. The relationship between such a pairing is only meant to provide a cerebral one. The players create the playground. There are lines the relationship shouldn't cross. Outcomes like that do occur, of course, and it can happen so quickly and subtly you never see the danger until you're already over the precipice. But it is not an inevitability anymore than the acts themselves are limited to mere debasement. Both are ultimately defined by the participants. I doubt very much that you of all people would be in danger of succumbing to either pitfall."

"I bet everyone who's ever lost themselves to the fantasy had that same certitude going into it." He looked aside at her as they came to another red light. "You don't know me, Castle. I mean, you do some and you're certainly learning," she allowed while returning his attention for a moment, "but if you really knew me? You'd never dangle something like this in front of me." Cars passed through the intersection ahead. So many lives in motion. "I don't get to play around like that. I've already tumbled into one abyss, remember?" She heard Rick's soft exhale of sudden understanding but he didn't interrupt. "I feel like the way I plunged into Mom's case left behind an indelible mark. There wasn't even a thought in my head for keeping pieces of a life separate from the crusade. I let myself get...pretty torn up. The wound didn't close."

"And so now you worry you'll prove especially susceptible to anything else that might change or consume elements of who you are."

She wet her lips, looked up at the road again, and pulled them through the green light.

The other's gaze shifted to the windshield too. At length, he shook his head and said, "That may be the most painfully honest self-assessment I've ever heard."

Beckett sighed quietly. _I love the way you listen._

"That's why communication is so important. It can be hazardous ground. That's true for everyone. The deeper you delve into this lifestyle, the more difficult it can be to return to the mundanity of everyday life. All of the rules and the obligatory niceties of civilization; the walls of our personalities which hem us in; they're good things. Limitations are healthy. They delineate the importance of what we don't allow to be compromised. Still, we chafe at them and long to reconstruct ourselves into something else. Someone better. That's why I stopped being a dom. After Alexis was born, there was no room left to justify the risk."

Oh. So he did understand in his own fashion.

"I'm not trying to blow this out of proportion," Kate hedged uncomfortably. "I know we're talking about a one-time thing and that it'd be on behalf of a case—

"But is that what it will stay after we've...indulged? Is once going to be enough? It's hard to look at an open door that might lead us somewhere else, maybe even a way towards becoming someone else, and not be curious about taking a little peek."

Beckett looked sharply aside at him and just as quickly back to front. "Exactly," she muttered.

"Forgive me for saying so, but it blows my mind that you'd admit to the concern."

"It's the only thing that's getting blown today," Kate grumbled, and he laughed.

Even a minimal stroke of levity allowed the detective to breathe a bit easier. It didn't drag the temperature back down to normal and it didn't disperse the woman's heightened awareness of her body in relation to everything it touched. All it really did was not make matters any worse.

"We've really gotten ourselves into a pickle this time," Castle said, miles later. He started to grin, but it was lost to a more genuine grimace of trepidation.

_You're just as worried as me_, she realized. _You're afraid that you'll enjoy dominating me so much that it'll change us forever._

Shit. Why was knowing that hotter than hell?

"We really have," she agreed.

"What do we do? I don't want to misstep or, ah, change things that shouldn't be changed."

"We have a murder to solve, Castle. We do what we have to."

"Damn the consequences?"

"Fuck the consequences," Beckett growled by way of confirmation. "Jessica comes first. I'll deal with the fallout after her killer is behind bars."

They passed the last several blocks in silence. All too soon she steered the nose of her sedan into a parking space out front of a pale-bricked and seemingly nondescript office building on 38th. The pair sat for almost a full minute in mutual silence, staring up at the awaiting edifice.

"It could be we're making a mountain out of a molehill," Castle said. "We might walk out of that building in a couple of hours laughing about having been concerned."

Beckett said nothing. In a perfect world, he'd be right. She felt it in her bones: he was wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

Nervousness ruled as they stepped beneath the angled shadow the building cast across the sidewalk. "We're only going to get one shot at this," Beckett reminded her partner. He nodded. "Don't hold back on my account, okay? Sell your part of it." He nodded again while frowning worriedly. "I'll do the same as best I can. We're first-timers. They must be expecting us to be a little unsure or hesitant, right? That must give us plenty of latitude for mistakes." More of his head bobbing was apparent at her peripheral. "And stop nodding at everything I say," she hissed as they neared the front entrance.

That was that. Her partner left.

Someone else stared back at her from behind cerulean skies. Castle looked at the door and then expectantly at her with his hands clasped at ease behind his back. When the detective instinctively hesitated, he leaned in close enough for her to detect the richness of his cologne and stated acidly, "Open it." She felt the strike of the consonants in her guts. "Or would you rather spend the rest of the day stationed out here to do the same for everyone else? I think you'd make a pretty doorstop, though likely not a terribly functional one," he added with a dubious crinkle of his nose.

_Fuck my life. Here we go…_

Beckett tamped down the innate lash of anger and opened the portal wide for him. There were a dozen people in the lobby, watching them as they entered. One look was enough—too much. They'd clearly seen the exchange and assumed the gist of what happened. Strange men's gazes raked covetously along her figure. Some of the women did the same. It wasn't unusual to be assessed. The difference was the additional hunger each of them seemed to radiate. It went beyond the physical and it was almost palpable.

The same appraisals were lent to her partner, but Castle strode up to the service desk without so much as a sideways glance. The cafe au late complexioned woman behind the desk eyed him up and then did the same to Kate. "Welcome," she said pleasantly, "to Lady Irena's House of Pain."

Castle moistened his lips as if to reply, but paused and looked aside at Kate. His brow acquired a single line of consternation. She heard the sharp snap of his fingers break the silence and glanced downward at the hand at his side to see him pointing at the floor.

Her eyes bulged with understanding.

_No. No way he intended for her to plant her ass in the dirt like a—_

"You can see my problem," Castle began dryly with a turn of his gaze to the woman behind the counter. "My new pet is terribly untrained. Spoiled rotten really. Frankly, I suspect she's beyond help, but I've heard that wonders have been worked here in the past. She is, at the very least, worth the forbearance needed to find out for certain one way or the other."

Kate could feel the gazes of everyone else drilling into her back. _Why is that kinda thrilling?_

"That's generous of you, sir," the clerk replied with a slim smile, playing seamlessly into their established roles. It was all happening so quickly. Zero to sixty. The receptionist looked Beckett over again coolly and the latter shifted her stance a bit as if wilting under the scrutiny. "We've molded more stubborn clay into a pleasing shape." _You wish, bitch._ "Have you already set up an appointment?"

"We have," Castle answered. "We established a four o'clock with Mistress Venom."

"Ah, excellent. Mistress Venom appreciates punctuality as much as she does referrals. Please, follow me."

"Thank you."

As they fell into step behind the receptionist and she opened a set of frosted-glass double doors ahead, Castle looked aside at her and Kate had her partner back. He all but shone with unvoiced questions in the set of his lips and the upturn of his eyebrows: _Are you okay? Do we keep going? Do we run for the hills screaming?_

Beckett shot him a fleet widening her eyes in response. _Pay attention, Castle, jeez._

He turned his focus back to front and simply by the correction of his shoulders to a level plane she knew he was all Dom. "We're to be interviewed," he asked. "Is that right?"

"It is," the short-haired woman leading the way confirmed. "When couples come to us to serve as an intermediary for their play—which is great, by the way. Very smart on both your parts to take the initiative and seek some professional advice. These waters can be a little perilous for beginners. Anyway, when that happens," she continued unabated, "the first step is to determine what your goals are for one another. Knowing what level of prior experience you each have and what level you're looking to progress toward together helps us figure out the best ways our staff can assist in the process. Don't worry," she assured mildly. "No one knows every answer their first time. It's a process," she added with a glance back at Kate. "One we take step-by-step so no one trips and falls."

"My pet has a physically demanding day job," her shadow provided. "We're leaning more toward games that engage the mind than ones that punish the body. She needs to be in top form, more or less." He sent Kate a chilly glance that seemed to promise 'less'. "That certainly shouldn't preclude any possibility of the latter option," he unknowingly confirmed. "She's nothing if not routinely deserving of a spanking." Kate wasn't merely playing a role when her gaze fell hard from his to the tiled floor between them. There was something unspeakably illicit about looking him in the eyes while knowing full well he was actively imagining her in such compromising positions.

She couldn't help but wonder: _Do I beg you to stop in your mind, or do I beg you not to?_

"That kind of wiggle room leaves plenty of space for fun," the other woman confirmed with a lush smile. "Here we are." She led the pair into a room on the right off the main hall. It was an almost stately space with its hardwood paneling. That was a sharp contrast to a few sections of lurid red glow from colored glass panels. Winks of industrialism abounded too in textured steel tool racks that bristled with all manner of toys, restraints and enigmatic implements that were used for who knew what mischief. "Mistress Venom will be with you shortly," the receptionist assured. She winked at Kate before exiting, a little break of character to convey encouragement: _Have fun!_

The detective exhaled in some relief. She relaxed her body into its natural uprightness and looked over the room with a critical eye. It didn't offer anything to her case by itself, except to put a new lens on their victim and her thesis research. A sharp _crack _brought Kate's eyes over to Castle who was, predictably, picking things up in his typical mode of hands-on investigation.

"Put that down," she hissed.

Castle turned slowly, blue eyes slimmed to mere blades and—oh. He hadn't given up the characterization just because the two of them were alone in the room. Well, that was taking her unspoken admonishment a bit too far. Yet, watching him turn and advance on her with the leather strap pulled taut around either fist...

"What do you think of my appellation for you? 'My pet'," he quoted aloud as strode slowly around her right side. She followed him with her stare until he passed out of easy sight. "It's an old fallback I selected within the necessity of the moment." She felt the faintest stir of his breath against her hair. "You might be thinking that you're deserving of a more considered and deliberate selection." Kate twitched when he snapped the leather together in another loud _crack_. "That's yet to be proven."

Dare she? Kate rounded her shoulders a little, clasped her hands together in front of herself, and gave a little bow of her head. "Whatever you think is best, Sir." _Holy shit, I did it!_ She couldn't believe it. A frenetic rush of exhilaration tingled through her blood and outward at her extremities.

"Hmm?" he returned in a considering hum. "Is that mine then? 'Sir'? You think you can lump me in alongside every other ill-equipped asshole that's deemed themselves fit to command you?" Oh man. He wanted to stand apart from her negative associations with other officers from work. _Jeez. That's actually really sweet. _As soon as he had stated as much, Kate wanted that for him too.

"What would you prefer?" she returned amusedly. "'Ma'am'?"

"Don't. Be. A wiseass."

When he lashed her across the backside with the leather strap, Kate almost died on the spot.

It hadn't qualified as light or hard but it was more than enough. Shock rooted the woman inert and speechless. A sudden backlash of anger writhed and crackled savagely around a seething tendril of something...else. Some _thing_ nestled deeply inside which arose to the call of his pleasurable violence like an uncoiling serpent. It slithered up out of her erotic core where it had lain concealed. It smiled slow and predatory, flicked a wicked crimson tongue, and hissed: _What's this then, love? A man with balls who also knows how to use them? Someone who isn't frightened off by a pretty face and figure being attached to an awakened mind? Come on into my hidey-hole then, big fella. Take off that stuffy coat and stay awhile. __And don't ever let me hear you say you weren't warned, ma brute._

Beckett shook her head with the heel of a palm laid against her forehead. It slid shakily backward across dark hair as she managed to reclaim some sense of cognitive order. She could actually feel the subtle difference in the aroused fullness of her vulva between her thighs and felt a slickness abiding within the heat that couldn't be denied. She turned somewhat dazedly at the neck to look for her partner and was immediately sent for another, harder tailspin when his fist snarled itself into her mane and roughly forced her face back to its forward position. If that had been the extent of it, maybe she would have managed her surprise better, but she heard the soft hiss that began his deep intake of breath and she felt one fingertip within all that brutality slide against the column of her throat with exploratory gentleness. Consuming the scent of cherry conditioner and satiating a long forbidden touch. Savoring her just like she'd imagined previously. That was one snowflake too many.

"I didn't tell you to look at me." The cold lethality in his voice crept down her spine and stroked a finger lovingly against the scaled chin of her deeply inner Other.

_Awww. But I want to, darling. Don't you miss my eyes already, as I do yours? Or do you see something back there that you want in equal measure, naughty boy?_

"Rick, stop!" Beckett managed to rip out of her throat and pulled forcibly away from him. Thank goodness he let go. It was like he knew. Her heart thundered in her chest as she stumbled apart like a drunkard to clutch one of the nearby tables. She bent there, sucking down ragged breaths.

Castle remained safely apart. Concern was etched into every subtle crease and smooth plain. His worry remained justifiable, but it was too late.

She was a goner and she knew it.

Part of the detective quivered from the same concern he bore. Her mind shied from, and yet couldn't deny itself the guilty pleasure of considering the potential consequences that might result from a dramatic shift in _their_ dynamic. She imagined forgetting herself and opening a door for Rick when the boys were around, having to stammeringly explain herself. And she imagined her companion shifting in the passenger seat of her sedan on the way somewhere important, unzipping his slacks and looking at her with cold expectation. _Protect and serve this, my pet. _Kate's free palm lifted by instinct and smoothed over the curve of her left breast and its concealed, turgid peak. She winced slightly from the crackling answer of sensitivity and snatched her hand away. _Slowly, Katie, jeez. Veeery slowly now. That's precisely the kinda shit cannot happen._

That was how Lady Irena found them. Freshly ruined and stumbling through the aftermath.


	6. Chapter 6

Obviously, she had gone temporarily insane.

That was the conclusion with which Detective Beckett consoled herself late Saturday morning, the day after the case had been closed. Almost two full days since the House of Pain. _Let's face it_, she mused privately as the showerhead spattered against her back, _it's been a while since I've...indulged. And it's been a whole lot friggin' longer since I considered anything more than standard sex as a mechanism by which to get off. A lot happened at once under what were very unusual and necessary circumstances at the time. I was overwhelmed. Yeah, damn. That's all it was. I was overwhelmed._

The deeper-seated part of her that had been awoken by Castle gave a silken chuckle within her core. She could almost feel the chime of those darkly woven notes of masochism and sadistic glee. _You were dripping lust from the petals of that poor, neglected flower like someone who'd just stepped in out of the rain, love. Why it's a wonder no one in the room slipped and hurt themselves._

_Smack!_ The wet sound of Kate's palm flattening against her brow was distinct within the bathroom. Would she never know inner peace again? What door did she open within herself and how the fuck did she seal it shut again?_ What a delicious choice of words, Katie._

Worse still, the shameful narrative implied refused to vanish so easily. It played out behind her eyelids like a movie reel, albeit in a slightly altered fashion. In the confines of her imagination, Lady Irena arrived five minutes later, which was time Kate used to lean against the table edge and collect herself more capably. She wasn't witnessed while she was horribly undone. At least, not by any stranger. She opened her eyes, narrowed them against the steady trickles of suds and water at her crown, and forced the mental image of herself to straighten up and collect her wits. Her imagined Beckett 2.0 told Castle in no uncertain terms that the game they'd engaged at was over. Never again. And in the edited version of events he smiled, patient and understanding. His clear blues bore a gleam of pride in her ability to deny herself denigrating cravings. He told her that she didn't have to be anything she didn't want to be. Certainly not with him.

But...then her edited version of the author stepped inward, closer. Closer. His showcase of pride on her behalf altered into one of surprise—no. A stomach-clench-inducing mockery of it. Becket 2.0 watched him lift a hand away from his side, which she alarmedly shied away from, but instead of attempting to contact her it touched the surface of the desk where her backside had been resting a moment before. He ran two fingertips through a horrifying smear of wetness there that she could suddenly _feel_ between her legs at its torrential source. Rick lifted the pair of digits into the air between their interlocked gazes so that they caught the light and gleamed in decadent betrayal. Undeniable. Then he brought them to his lips and sucked her slickness clean from them in one smooth motion. He looked her in the eyes all the while like she was the last source of cool water within a thousand hot miles. _Your lies taste sweet as honey, my pet._

The detective came hard around the showerhead where it was lowered to a sharply contrasting purpose between her thighs. It was so wrong. So all-consuming. Sounds escaped her that she'd never heard herself make before. Instead of feeling wound up tight and bursting she slumped bonelessly against the wall and slid to the floor of the tub where her body rocked and heaved in a pliable puddle of fit and starts. Deep-throated grunts and guttural sobs ripped loose of her throat throughout the climax. She came undone all over again simply from listening to her uncontrollably wanton echoes.

Several minutes later, she laboriously sat up and cried like a damned basketcase. She couldn't have stated why.

_What is wrong with me?_

That was just it, though. It wasn't any single matter but a lot of little ones. That's how it felt: like a swarm of doubts and insecurities were besetting her. Subbing for Castle—and how incredibly ludicrous that act still seemed in retrospect—was the impetus of what felt like a larger threat in motion.

If they ever truly had been previously, silence and avoidance were no longer applicable medicines. The unspoken allure of submissiveness dogged her mercilessly as Kate changed and went out jogging around the sharply angled edges of Tribeca park. It sat moodily at her table for two in the bakery across the street while she comforted herself with a single serving of budino di pane. An hour later, at home again, she gave a voluble growl of frustration and relented to calling her partner.

Castle answered on the second ring. "Detective Beckett," he issued warmly by way of greeting. "Please don't tell me we've acquired a new case already. I do enjoy our work, you know, but I'd rather maintain some illusion that our city is not a den of villainy so proliferate as to produce back-to-back murders."

"Get over here and turn this goddamn thing off," she demanded.

Bewildered silence answered back at first because in typical fashion they hadn't spoken a word about what had happened. Until presently. When the man replied, he sounded appropriately confused. "If you're talking about what I think you're talking about—

"What _else_ would I be talking about?" she fired back incredulously.

"—I think we both know better," he soldiered on as if she hadn't interrupted, "than to imagine I could ever make you do anything you didn't want to do." Pause. "Are you okay?"

Beckett started to speak but jolted to a rigid halt. She'd stopped herself a hairsbreadth from saying: _Okay?! No! I came in the shower this morning. Twice! And I wrapped my lips around whispers of your name while it happened. _That would've been a fib, after all, in addition to being a personal victory he never would've let her live down. Hell, if she'd been capable of intelligent speech earlier maybe she would've also possessed the wherewithal to have not masturbated to images of her partner in the first fucking place.

The urge to tell him something so flagrantly out of character was, Kate stubbornly decided, clear evidence of the madness he'd awoken. And he needed to shut it the hell down. Pronto. This was his...thing, right? If anyone could do it, surely he must be able to.

"You think this mess you've put me in is pretty fucking hilarious, don't you?"

She heard the soft wetness of him moistening his lips, a blip of prevarication while he momentarily considered his reply. "I think it's absolutely breathtaking to imagine you asking yourself questions that have probably been pushed aside for a long, long time in favor of the work you do."

_W-whoa. What?_

"I think you're in danger of enjoying yourself and being excited about something that doesn't revolve around that murder board. Do you understand how," Rick paused, sighed quietly, and continued, "how gratifying it is to witness that? How humbling it is to play a small part in it? If you expect remorse from me—well, don't hold your breath."

"What're you saying to me?" Kate groaned aloud while plopping her head against the couch cushion behind her. "What are you _doing _to me? I was fine. We were fine. And now we're…" _Gonna mess this up and ruin everything we've worked so hard to build._

"Beckett, I understand that you're worried. If you'll permit an outside perspective here: it's okay to be. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't be. I'm only urging you to not allow your concern to overshadow the fact that you had the strength to pick up the pieces and create the woman you became. You're still strong. And now you're engaging all threats from much steadier footing. Temptation doesn't make you less extraordinary. It only makes you human. You're allowed to be one."

Kate sighed. "You're biased."

"I suppose that makes me human too," he surmised amusedly.

"I'll be damned," she huffed. "That _is_ a little better actually. Thanks." Richard hummed lowly in wordless acceptance. "What, uh. What're you doing?"

"Plotting," the other replied mildly. He took a little too much pleasure from being enigmatic. He knew she had a hard time letting that fly.

"For the next book?"

"For Nikki? No. She plots me," he complained at a grumble, which made the detective smirk. _Good girl._

"So what're you plotting then? Go ahead and say it. I know you want to," she added, bristling and uncomfortable.

He didn't say. He asked. "May I come over?"

Beckett swallowed, gripped the cell tighter in irritation at herself for hesitating, and answered back with capable evenness, "I don't think that's a good idea right now."

"I don't think that was a 'no'."

The line went dead. She stared at her cell for a dull moment, wide-eyed. _Shit! Flee, Katie!_

Wait, no. This was her apartment. She wasn't going anywhere.

Instead, Beckett bolted up and took a second, hastier shower to wash away the residue of the ineffective and ill-timed jog. She did not play with herself at any point. _Atta girl. You got this._ She managed to get through the processes of blow-drying, brushing out her wild mane, and administering a light layer of make-up before a knock was audible at her front door. A glance down at her figure still embraced by a navy terry cloth towel produced only a shake of her head in exasperation. _You're a perverted mofo even when it's accidental. _She fed the remaining cosmetic items back into their proper drawer before swapping to her cell phone and texting him.

**Sit your intrusive ass down. You're gonna need to gimme a few.**

Those capable thumbs of his all-too-swiftly texted back: **Why? What's wrong? **And then seconds later: _**Gasp!**_** Are you naked right now?**

A little twinge of mirth slithered through her veins as Kate moved into the master suite. Her eyes dragged to a halt on the full-sized mirror standing in one corner of the room. _Don't you dare, Katie._ Oh, but she dared all right. With a bit of maneuvering, a couple rejected takes, and a soupçon of accelerated breaths in heady surprise at herself the detective eventually sent him a picture that revealed the curves of her towel-clad hips, the wintry pallor of smooth upper thighs, and her long-fingered right hand where it gripped the towel edge between them, as if threatening to lift the fabric higher, but instead remained poised with the middle finger extended downward in flat denial.

**Be honest. Mine's bigger isn't it?**

Castle didn't miss a beat. **We can compare as soon as you open up.**

Beckett winced and threw her phone on the bed. _Open up indeed, you quick-witted sonofabitch._

Another text arrived while she was scouring her closet for a likely suspect to don. Curiosity won out. She flopped bodily upon the bedspread and wrangled the device to her.

He'd sent: **You're so fair. It's funny. I hadn't considered our differences in that respect beforehand, maybe because it's so specific. Deliberate. I am now. I think you'd shine like ivory with the bronzed hues of my dick pressed against your skin for contrast.**

_Fuuuuck._

Beckett smooshed her face into the covers, flung the tormenting cell phone away again, and rolled to the other side with her legs curling inward and upward for one more private minute. She laid there, a terry cloth and fair-skinned orb of mental storytelling, excitement, and anxiety. The man was deliciously fun. He was a good force of balance in her life even, and perhaps especially when that quality didn't work out in the manner she would demand from it. Those things being true, it wouldn't be the end of her if he walked away at some point because of the game they'd initiated recently. She would survive the terrible lack and move on, eventually. It wasn't the same as losing her mother; at least she'd know Rick was still out there somewhere. Sadly detached from her, yes, but alive. That was something. It was a lot.

Even so, Kate couldn't imagine the pain and disappointment that would accompany a sudden absence of the man and she didn't want to.

Another text chimed in. Against her better judgment, she fished about blindly and soon read it too. **I'm going to grab us lunch at Kang's, slow-poke. Make some room in that belly while you're clothing it.**

She typed back: **And here I was sifting through my half-cropped halter tops so I could show off my navel ring. Oh well. See if they'll give you a side-serving of good behavior.**

To which he countered: **The goal is sating your appetite, detective, not teasing it.**

"That is a fine goal," Kate conceded aloud and dropped the phone without making a reply.

In a fit of cheekiness, she selected one of her proposed halter tops to wear along with a dangerously succinct pair of khaki shorts. The former was cream-toned and buttery soft. It laid against her upper half like a prostrated worshiper against temple stone. It wasn't halved across the midriff as she'd teased, but the plunging neckline was...bold. She experimented with the article, trying it on with and without a bra. She lifted her mane of dark hair out of the way at the base of her head and viewed her unsupported profile, then did the same with arms lowered and her chest resting naturally. 'You've still got it' versus 'Don't wallow in denial'. _Decisions, decisions._

She dithered, curled her toes into the rug, and ended up texting Lanie: **Do I still have the tits to go braless?**

A minute later the reply chimed in: **How you gonna ask that of a woman carrying my loadout? Mean thing. You're disgustingly pert. Let 'em loose. Do jumping-jacks. Savor your gifts, bitch.**

Beckett shook with quiet laughter.

Another message arrived a moment later: **Who're you trying to dazzle with both barrels?**

**It was a purely academic inquiry.**

**Stop right there. I'm wearing new pumps. I can't go stomping through bullshit. **Then the M.E. added: **Omg! Of course. Damn, girl. When you said you wanted to show writer-boy some appreciation I had no idea you were gonna be this thorough.**

**You know me: no half measures. What're you up to?**

Lanie replied: **At a seminar. Work stuff. **Success! The lack of further denial seemed to have thinned out her besty's speculation. **Thanks for the distraction, but I'm getting glared at. **She added a pair of capital O's that were either meant to be staring eyes or braless boobs. **Tell me later how the show went. Fair warning: if you end up 'sucking', it's gonna make for a wonderful cherry on top of the conversation we had about hypocrisy a few days ago. I await your groveling.**

_Sheesh_. Okay. Maybe an assumption of having allayed suspicion was premature.

A staccato series of knocks at the front door sent the detective moving fleet and bare-footed through her place. She slowed two-thirds of the way to her destination, grumbled at herself for the gazelle-like exuberance and completed the trip calmly with a lean to check the peephole.

Her awaiting arrival wasn't wearing the suit. Kate didn't know if she was happy or disappointed. It had only taken one circumstance to create a steadfast association. SWAT members had their tactical gear. Knights wore their battle armor. Richard Castle donned slimming and modern cut virgin wool, which was a decidedly marked difference from the casual tone set by his current jeans and a navy, slub-notch t-shirt.

Blue eyes that were dimmed to overcast skies by the muted hallway lighting cut sharply to front and locked onto Kate's despite the barrier between them. Her head ticked back a notch upon her neck. Jeez. She knew it was coincidental timing but it was a little startling. Did the guy come equipped with some kinda internal, Kate-oriented proximity alert or what?

Beckett corrected her stance, flicked open the deadbolt, and unlatched the privacy chain. She opened the portal to the width of her hips and held it at a bracketing fit while studying the man on the other side. "Yes? Can I help you?"

His eyes spoke to an affirmative while they raked her over like a pit of smoldering coals. Top to bottom to top again. He'd described her as fair earlier. That was apt; she felt like the pallid white stick of a candle before his scrutiny and the final connection of his gaze to hers, pupils blown wide and his jaw set tight, brought her aflame.

Castle lifted the plastic bag at his side. "I've come bearing gifts. Also a basis for comparison as I understand it."

_Oof. Okay, that one's on me. Fair._ "So I see," Beckett replied noncommittally. She didn't withdraw from the doorway. That status of his welcome confused her caller. Rick shifted his stance with uncertainty. "And just who am I letting inside?" she asked. "My partner or my Dom?"

"Which would you prefer?" he parried immediately.

It was just a blip. A mere lick of coolness that flashed across his countenance and crystallized across his eyes like an opaque seal of frost. Just as swiftly, it vanished. The effect was...magnetic. It certainly didn't help matters any that she'd been running hot for the past few days or that getting herself off that morning had only sharpened her need to an acute edge. Beckett unconsciously smoothed the surface of the door around which her shoulder and right arm were braced, unseen by him.

"I get a choice in the matter then?"

"Always," Castle breathed, which melted her stance into a heavier lean against the jamb. He couldn't just be good-looking, or an enticing element around which to explore some power play. The man had to be both _and _sweet. _Seriously. It's not even a fair fight_.

"Get in here," she sighed and stepped apart to allow it.

Beckett heard him close the door. She heard the sharp metallic clack of the deadbolt being re-engaged hard. The sound hit her in the base of the spine and sent a ripple of excitation skittering up the ladder of her vertebrae. _Oh boy._ _Here we go again..._


	7. Chapter 7

"In here," Beckett said with a deceptively steady tone. "I'll grab some plates and stuff."

Her partner knew the drill. After discarding his shoes, he was en route to the kitchen behind her.

She withdrew the appropriate silverware. The bag of goodies gave a distinctive rustle as the burden was set aside upon the island. That sound normally produced a downright Pavlovian stir of hunger that had her ready to dine in earnest. Not so much presently.

Beckett reached for a pair of plates and stiffened in surprise when she felt Castle ease in at her back. A dark spice of scent was suddenly there. The fall of his shadow swallowed her whole. A subtle aura of body heat rolled off of him and splashed against her wealth of bare skin. Goosebumps rose across her upper arms, thighs, and at the back of her neck where his breath tickled. Her eyes slammed shut and her mouth opened slightly when his left hand found her hip. The breadth of his grasp opened wide. Light though it was, he spanned most of her rib cage. He felt bigger than was physically possible.

Beckett waited with something akin to disdain for the predictable press of his pelvis against her ass. When it didn't come, there was a second or two in which she started to ache for it. There was one half-breath of a moment where, if he _had _done it, fast and hard, Kate might have let him do anything else he wanted to her right then and there.

_Partner, if you only knew._

Castle used the supposed anchor of counterbalance she provided to reach above and slide the plates back into place upon the shelf. "Kang's wasn't open yet." The fine, smaller curls of hair about her ear and neck swayed under a lick of his breath. It took his statement to realize that, indeed, she wasn't drowning in the smell of Chinese food.

"You entered my home under false pretenses?"

"Technically, I did bring a gift."

"Yeah, I bet you did. God's gift to all my gender, right?" Beckett returned dryly and pushed backward to free herself from the warm, aromatic gulf of his looming presence.

He went with ease and without even a nudge resulting. A smirk played at his lips. He gestured to his right at the bag upon the counter.

Beckett circled around her guest and the island to stand at its far side. It was a better barrier when it stood solidly between them. "What's this then?"

"A gift," Castle inanely announced with crisp syllables.

_Bah. _"Mhm. For whom, I wonder?" the host grumbled, but she relented and drew it closer. The nondescript plastic bag gave no indication of the contents, but the pair of white-topped black-bottomed boxes within certainly did. One was slim and long, the other squarish and short. Both of them bore a triplet of large, bold-font letters in black across their pale surfaces. T.L.S. She didn't need three guesses. The Love Shackle was still relatively fresh in her mind after their visit a few days ago.

Beckett's suspicious glare snapped up to him. The man was grinning, which was hardly in keeping to the role of a dom. He wasn't trying to be one. Maybe the facade would've failed even if he had been. Rick loved giving people presents to open. He got excited like a little boy. "Go on," he urged in a deceptively calm tone.

"Are we…" She stopped, wet her lips while considering how to actually pose the question.

"Live?" her companion asked amusedly. Kate nodded, grateful for once that he seemed to have a direct line into her goddamn head. "No. Sessions of play should have clear starting points and conclusions. You'll know when it happens."

"You call them sessions?"

"I name them based on their predominant themes," he explained, "like the chapters of a novel. There's no wrong way. Sessions. Exhibitions. Use whatever feels appropriate."

"Appropriate. Now there's a friggin' misnomer."

Castle smirked. "Let's hope so. Open your gift—the bigger one. It's nothing bad."

It was bad. It was..._phew_.

The larger, slimmer box contained a black corset. The rolling scent of top-tier leather was fresh, thick, and injected visceral appeal for the detective with a collection of leather jackets and motorcycle breeches. The piece was surprisingly absent of attempts at extravagance. It was simple, deadly, custom-tailored. The shape of the bust looked especially, embarrassingly accurate. Modest in size but with enough height to accommodate the slightly upward cant of her teardrop chest. It dipped flirtatiously between the breasts to converge at the clench of a shiny, steel-toothed zipper. Smooth, sleek lines brought it down across the midriff to a level termination along the front. The back met at a slimmer solid band that would leave her bare from her shoulder-blades up, but it was level along the bottom there too, making for a secure and comfortable fit.

"Jeez," Beckett murmured softly.

"There should be one more little item in there."

Sure enough, also within the box was a pair of under—no. The obscene scrap of a thing didn't qualify as underwear. It was a silken black ribbon bound to soft meshing cut into a pair of triangles that would do almost as much to tantalizingly showcase her nether regions as it would conceal them.

"Little?" Beckett echoed with a scowl at his barely withheld amusement.

"It's subjective."

"It's subjugative," she countered with a grimace at the slinky, soft article in-hand.

"Then it's perfect."

Oh. So it was. _Heh._ Kate pursed her lips into a firm line. Smiling would only encourage him. "It's obscene," she assured with a level glance, "and gorgeous. Thanks, Castle."

"You should make some closet space. We're going to be regular patrons of Barry's lovely shop."

"So you assume," Beckett replied with an arching eyebrow. "I never said you had me convinced about, y'know, all this."

"No," Castle conceded without losing the subtle crinkles of mirth bordering his summer skies. "You merely implied trembling anticipation."

"You inferred it," she snarled embarrassedly, but that only made him chuckle.

"Would you like to...try a little?" His attention was right there waiting when hers shot to him like a cannonball. He smoothed the section of countertop before him and she—she tried not to imagine the palm moving down her back or along the length of her legs. "We could call it a trial run."

Beckett waited out a hitch in her breathing, said, "I'm pretty sure we already had one of those."

"Not even close." The reply came swiftly upon hers despite emerging at a quiet and pleasing reverberation. It was almost startling and silence dripped in its wake for several seconds.

"I don't think I can let myself say it," she admitted bewilderedly. "Jeez. I'm sorry. It's just too crazy. Too sudden. I know it's just one little word, but I can't—" Kate paused to see her guest stand up straighter. All mirth wiped clear of his expression. The difference was like a sudden slam of their bow into pure polar ice.

"That's not going to work," he struck almost harshly. "Not saying no isn't a yes. I don't engage at non-consensual play or even a passing shadow of it." His gaze softened a tick and the tone eased towards normal. "It's fine if you're not ready—it's more than just fine. If we do this, I want you to be excited about it too and have no reservations. If getting to that point entails waiting, so be it. But you need to be able to communicate with me plainly one way or the other."

"You _know_ I want to," Kate scraped out and blushed slightly. _Gah! Hide me._

Rick considered her for a beat longer where he stood. Then slid into moton out around the island to approach. He paused before her, closer but not invading. Yet. "There may be an avenue of compromise. There are," his focus drifted aside in thought and then back, "groupings, let's say, of common BDSM behaviors. Sometimes you'll want things more physical. Rough," he expounded mildly. It didn't take lean of severity upon the word to get her gears turning within and revving to a steady hum. "Or you might feel more conversational on a different night. Not in the sense of talking dirty to one another," he clarified. _Aw._ "That too though," he added as an afterthought. _Awww yeah._ "I mean it in the sense of… Hmm. Bear with me, please. I haven't had to explain it like this before."

"You said you've had other subs."

"Sure," Richard conceded, either unheeding or unaware of the chill in her slightly perturbed tone. "It's different now, that's all. I am. And beforehand it was always playing. I've never tried this with someone I—" He stopped jarringly and snapped his mouth shut. "Well," he injected, "it was just different before. Anyway, the point is—

"Someone you what?"

Castle closed his eyes, sucked in a slow breath and shook his head.

_I know. I'm awful. Let's hear it anyway._

"Someone I don't actually _want_ to dominate." The words left a lot of room for interpretation. They did. So why was her heart hammering against her ribs as if he'd just steered them narrowly past the crumbling edge of a sheer and very specific cliff?_ You just had to ask, Katie._

"So," she began tightly and stalled out right there.

"So," he provided, "instead of saying 'yes', we could try applying keywords to these groupings of behavior. It can be used to declare your consent and it carries the additional bonus of conveying a wealth of tasty detail as to what you want me to do to you at that particular moment and time."

"Whoa," the detective emitted as a groan. "C-can you not put it like that?"

"I can. I elected not to."

The swift shot of her ire didn't find him smiling at her. He stared coolly back, remorseless, daring her to contradict him. _Yeesh. _Kate did dare, but she didn't want to. If he could just look at her like that for a while she might be able to blow her top without even being touched. _But do the touching too, just 'cuz. Lots of that._

"Um." Beckett shook her head. "Can you gimme an example?"

Castle didn't answer at first but stared her down the way she did suspects sitting across the interrogation room table. When he meant it, the man was capable of producing a worthy recreation. "Are you genuinely asking, or are you being obtuse because it thrills you to hear me talk about it?"

"Both," Kate gusted with a swift series of nods. "Definitely both."

He smiled, seeming pleasantly surprised, even a little bewildered by her candor. Following some consideration, he nodded at her indicatively. "Before I oblige, let me warn you: this is going to blur the lines of play some." She arched her eyebrows in confusion but he went on. "I'm going to remove your shorts." The tone was so ordinary. He could've just as easily used it to ask her to pass the soy sauce.

_You—you're gonna what now?_

"Did you forego a pair of underwear too, or is it only the bra that's missing?"

Kate didn't mean to, but—_shit happens_—she smirked, slow and wide. _Come find out._ _Using your t__eeth only._

A gasp shot free of her when he was suddenly at her, grabbing her hips roughly and spinning her in an about-face. Within the same initial flash of alarm two things happened: she tamped down the irrational fear that Rick would ever actually hurt her, and she firmly quelled the instinctive urge to compound the momentum he'd imposed by adding a whirl at her waist and using her right elbow to shatter his jaw. The latter option was harder to deny. It was...dangerously close. She wondered if the potential threat her deeply ingrained police training represented added to the eroticism for him. _You should be worried if you aren't, damn it. Be careful!_

Beckett grunted when he pushed against her shoulder blades and bent her over the counter some. She couldn't have said whether the sound was protest or invitation. Her mind was awhirl. She didn't know what was coming, didn't know if he'd stop. _Please don't stop. _Another wordless sound—_invitation, definitely_—broke loose when she felt his hands reach around to unfasten her shorts. He wasn't gentle but it wasn't belligerent ether. The man was a firestorm of deliberate force and she was flung like ascending embers scattered by his thermal gusts violence. Every time he touched her he _moved _her, rocked her, bumped her pelvis against the counter edge in front of her. He lowered the zipper and tugged the offending article down. She had worn underwear, of course, a cute pair of white boyshorts that clasped her curves with a flattering silhouette and barely crested above the hips. They remained behind as he pressed her shorts as far down her legs as he could reach.

"Finish it," he whispered viciously near her right ear.

Beckett sucked in a steadying breath and stepped back from the island. While obeying, she pushed her ass out more than was strictly necessary and rocked it with dramatized shifts of her weight. She stepped out of the shorts, straightened, and turned to face him with them dangling from a finger.

_Boy oh boy. If looks could hump._

Hard-fought control pressed her guest's lust back and back until it was beyond her ability to perceive in him. He took the shorts along with a deep breath, folded the former neatly and laid them aside upon the kitchen counter behind them. Castle faced her squarely, crossed his arms at his sternum and said, "I want us to try and get through the rest of this conversation without your base urges disrupting us again."

Kate rocked where she stood, half dumbfounded. _Motherfucker, you're one to talk? _She watched blankly, still swallowing back the urge to retort as he cleared the island of the bag, the opened box, and the tissue paper that had sheathed her new corset. None of those efforts were performed the way he'd handled her. In her experience, he'd never gripped _anything _the way had her, with barely controlled passion seething to shake its leash and maul in the very best of ways.

"Sit up here," Castle instructed.

"On the counter?"

"Unless you'd prefer the floor," he stated icily.

Goodness goddamn gracious. Beckett knew better, of course, but he might make a believer out of her yet if he kept that up. With some awkwardness, she levered herself up onto the surface. It wasn't exactly cozy. The tile was hard under her backside, cold.

Heat found her. Blazing grasps as Castle gripped her right calf, bent her knee into a slight arch and opened her up wider. _Ohhhh, hell yes, come and get it. _He paused to behold the nervous clamp of her teeth around her plump lower lip and to see her leaning back expectantly on one elbow. His eyes narrowed angrily.

"Whatever reward you think you've earned, my pet, I promise that you haven't. Not by a mile."

She stifled a miserable groan. _Bummer._

Castle situated her other limb into place at an opposing angle from its twin. Her toes curled and gripped the counter edges where they had been manually positioned. She'd been splayed thusly before while wearing less, but she'd never felt as naked as she did before his scrutiny. Rick's gaze dripped like splashes of hot wax down along her front and into the conjunction of her thighs. He moistened his lips unconsciously.

"Now I can see you clearly," he said breathily. "And you know I can. So if you start seeping through the fabric, we'll both have tangible proof that you can't control yourself."

It was like a slap across the face.

Worse, because the sudden strike of condemnation only made her hunger badly to see him seeing her soaked through. She _needed _to know what he looked like when he was sluiced with that forbidden awareness of her. Kate wanted the image seared into his cerebral cortex so that every time he 'snuck' a peek at her ass while she was filling out pieces of the murder board from then onward he'd be thinking back to that night, to the way she'd glistened for him.

"Penny for your thoughts."

Beckett twitched guiltily. "Not for all the pennies you have."

"Oh?" The set of his brow was level and his lips nothing more than pensive. "Is your inner commentary slanting towards sluttiness?" She could have screamed. Kate buried her face in her hands instead. Resonance of his dark chuckle lapped against her open cove. The sensitivity from feeling overexposed was real. "Hiding like that is exactly what we'll be attempting to overcome as we go, just to be clear. It isn't easy, but I hope you'll come to trust the space we create together enough to say whatever you wish."

"Uh-huh. I'll work on that. We'll be the kinkiest hundred-year-olds ever."

Castle smiled and shook his head. "It isn't a race. It takes time. Let it."

Beckett sighed and nodded. "Okay." Then worried her lower lip and added, "That doesn't mean you can't fill in the gap some, y'know?"

An eyebrow tilted slightly aloft. "You're assuming I need permission?"

"You want it," the detective murmured quietly. She wasn't like him, wasn't...sweet. But she could find her own way of putting him at ease. Bravado trickled out of his shoulders, neck, and the stern set of countenance. "And you have it. Whatever you want, Castle."

"That's a lot of latitude. It's a lovely sentiment and it makes me feel good to hear it. As we go, however, try to imagine firmer barriers around the behavior you'll accept. Keep them categorized. It'll help you put the aforementioned labels on them." He stepped closer, brushing her knees with his sides.

Beckett swallowed. "The ones you were about to give me examples of?"

"Mhm. If you said 'Shatter me' for instance, I might automatically know that you wanted it very physical. Spanking. Frequent repositioning so you can feel yourself being gripped and moved. Maybe a little breath play—I can only do a little," he added with a slightly sheepish smile. "I have my limits too."

"Is that—

"Choking."

Kate started to answer but her voice cracked and squeaked. _Oopsy._ She cleared her throat and said, "A little is perfect. I, uh, can't have you marking me up anyway."

"Oh, there'll be plenty of that where it won't be so readily apparent," he issued with a palm rising from his side. It hovered over her left knee. _Yes, land! _Rick noticed her looking, blinked at his apparently wayward limb. He returned it stoically to his side and she groaned aloud. To her delight, he laid both palms against the counter instead and bent at the waist to bring his visage closer to the conjunction of her thighs. "And how're we doing down here, hrm?

"Soft as down and dry as the Sahara," she touted, outright lying. _Prove me wrong. With your lovely face._

Rick was silent, his eyes half-lidded. They shut. His lips peeled apart and quivered in a perfectly soundless snarl. "I can smell your arousal."

_Holy hell._ Kate blushed intensely and tried to spontaneously fucking vanish. No such luck.

Castle's eyelids peeled apart even as the sensory organs behind them rolled on down from the back of his head. He laid his focus dead on hers. That was goddamn beautiful. She hardly breathed amidst their connection. Rick laid a palm neatly before her on the tile, centrally, hauntingly close to her aching heat. "Do you want to show me?"

Beckett couldn't speak for fear of screaming her answer. She managed a shaky nod.

"Perhaps soon," he said and stood up straight again, "if you continue behaving."

She could have cried. Oh god. The wetness actually started gathering, welling up undeniably. She couldn't believe her body's betrayal.

Castle noticed. And he blew her fucking mind with the smile that crept into place. Kate never would have imagined he could be cruel. _Playfully cruel_, she started to correct herself but no_. What the fuck ever. Cruel!_ It was genuinely hard to accept. It was such a contrast to the way he'd always been. Not just with her but anyone. Everyone.

"This reminds me," her partner stated conversationally as she angrily wiped her eyes. "You need to decide on our appellations and a safety word. What do you want?"

She met his gaze solidly and said, "I wanna fuck." It was flat out frigging glorious to see the way her bold statement crinkled the author's brow and lowered his head a little towards his chest. Atlas must have reacted the same when the weight of the world sank onto his shoulders for the first time. _Priceless._

Any confidence he'd put on shaky ground _surged_ back into the half-prone detective with a heady rush.

Beckett shifted her right foot away from its designated perch and ran it across the waistline of the other's jeans. No erection was apparent, but that wasn't a bad thing. It didn't twinge at her insecurity. She wanted him to have control. So she could savor taking it away from him later. _Nuh-uh, Ricky. That's mine._ The fabric of his navy t-shirt tickled against the pad of her foot and crinkled coolly between her gripping toes.

To her surprise, Rick did nothing to prevent her from lifting the article higher and revealing a narrow band of flesh. He wasn't vastly dissimilar from her in skin tone despite the assurance that he bore a deeper bronze...elsewhere. She wet her lips and dragged her eyes along the inwardly slanting shelf where the obliques angled over the hips and lashed themselves to the rippling plateau of the abdominal rack—that classically male 'V' which all but shone to her like a golden downward arrow. _Don't mind if I do. _Her eyes sifted through a dusting of fine dark hair at his treasure trail_. _"Can I just...see it? Just for a moment," Beckett requested. She managed not to smile evilly.

Alas, the man was not suddenly rendered a fool by her shenanigans.

Her languidly flowing thoughts and devious intentions were jarred clear by the shocking abruptness with which Rick snapped his right hand closed around her ankle. The slap of skin to skin was gratifying even if his grip hurt a little. That tightness lessened some as he lifted her wayward limb clear of himself and higher still. He stopped, looked down at her with a sudden suffusion of ravenous defeat, and leaned in closer to brush his lips along the lateral longitudinal arch. It wasn't a kiss. It was a warm satiny glide. Her hips jerked involuntarily from the contact and a bow of her back pushed her chest into proud lifts.

Kate heard herself let out a strangled, unintelligible gurgle and _damned_ him straight to hell for eliciting such a thing.

The sonofabitch. If he'd just get to it fuck her properly the indignity would end. _Not really though, jeez. Don't you dare stop._

Beckett came back to herself as he resumed bending her right leg backward as a whole to the effect of her eyes widening slightly. His shadow crawled on ahead while his comparatively massive, wholly welcome upper body lowered into place over her at a lean. Lower. Tingles of anticipated contact raced ahead of his progress and hummed beneath the surface of her skin like a single great beacon. _Beep-blink. __Land here, please. _She lowered flat onto her back and lifted her hands from her sides to meet him halfway.

But the author's free hand slapped to the counter at her left, a mechanism of rippling support by which he kept himself poised achingly apart from her. Inches, no more. Her eyes slid from the knee that was at that point bordering her right cheek to his grip about her ankle above them both. That looked so fucking good. The new positioning was nice too for the moment. It opened her up at her molten core. She could almost feel the chubby lips of her labia peeled apart from one another, blossomed like petals of night-blooming jasmine spreading to the dark gentleman of evening even while strands of her arousal gleamed between them like syrupy tethers reluctant to allow the divide. She half expected the coolness of the ambient temperature to produce wisps of steam to trickle up from between her legs.

"Touch me," she rasped with her eyes closed. She easily conceded an added, "Please."

"No." It was as immediate as it was certain. Coldly delivered and final.

Kate opened her eyes again in surprise and, honestly, found the unblinking, unyielding fixation of his blue eyes too much to endure for once.

"It's time to choose the designations of our roles," Rick continued placidly, still hovering.

He was so close. She could have arched herself up from the counter more and found him, but there was a daunting suspicion that if she tried he would answer with swift retaliation. The worst punishment Kate could imagine at that moment was him leaving. Given the occasions in which their minds ventured to the same conclusions during cases—sometimes via the same blurted statements no less—she sure as hell wasn't risking that gut-wrenching eventuality.

"Kate?"

Beckett jolted subtly everywhere at once to hear his mouth clasp her first name.

"Call me that," she issued fast and breathless. "Call me Kate. Jesus. I almost came."

"Well, we certainly can't have that happening yet," Castle returned with cruel humor twinkling above her. Such a bastard. Such a delicious bastard. Still, the woman beneath him huffed explosively at herself for having paid out too much data. "Names aren't the best choice," her captor rumbled, still somewhat amusedly it seemed to her. "The idea is to leave barriers between the play and the players, remember? Choose something that speaks to you, but also something you'd be unlikely to hear in the everyday world."

"I," Beckett started but stopped. She squirmed a little at her hips where she lay. "I know you said that it isn't especially original, but I kind of like the one you already use."

"My pet."

"Yeah," she mumbled quietly, embarrassed.

"You _do_ seem responsive to it," he mused with his gaze holding the fresh turgidity of her nipples where they strained against her t-shirt. Rick bent at the neck some and exhaled a stream of cool breath across her right peak through pursed lips. The detective tried not to explode. She felt herself bending involuntarily where she lay—towards him or away she didn't know—and felt the charges of sensation in her nipple pulse like an echo between her legs.

"What about mine? We're certainly not using 'Sir'. And while 'master' is always a classic, it doesn't really feel like a winner to me. Not for us."

_No. Go away with your words. _Beckett needed to breathe not talk. What—what frigging planet was this again? A small burst of recollection scattered her daze. "Oh. I think I already selected yours," she murmured in realization. "That afternoon at the dungeon."

"I don't remember you saying anything."

"Ye—no," she corrected and turned her face to the side. "I didn't say it, but...I thought it."

She started to turn back to him but halted sharply when he lowered his face closer towards hers. Kate felt his chest seal against her middle because of the opportune angle and whimpered in relief. Fucking _whimpered._ Screw it. There was contact. Delicious pressure. She lunged her hips into the hard impediment of his abdomen and shuddered violently. It didn't hit her squarely enough where she needed it, but holy beautiful heavens on a stick it was _something_. Her snapped her legs around his back. She bucked and moaned deeply in gratification. "Oh god." She did it again. Again. Again. She was on a roll. A loud, wanton roll. "Oh please."

"Look at yourself," Castle breathed into her left ear, otherwise unmoving as she hurled herself at him. "Am I training my sub or a fucking animal?"

_Oh my god! _Kate splayed her palm across her eyes and face but she didn't stop. Couldn't stop, because he'd just made her urgency so much worse. She wanted to crawl into a deep dark hole somewhere and die of shame. After she cums though. A few times. Five.

Castle snapped his teeth against the air so close to her left ear she felt the graze. "Give me the appellation or I get up and will leave you like this."

"_Mon brute_," Beckett managed to salvage from her foggy mind, savoring the French inflection attached to it. Rick withdrew somewhat to see her clearly. She met his gaze before hers rolled shut with the next undulation of his body against him. She nodded. "_Mon brute_."

His focus drifted to one side in contemplation. She saw his lips come together in a cool smirk and knew that he favored the choice. A slim eyebrow tilted aloft over one cerulean pool. "I'll have to earn that, you realize."

Beckett rolled her hips into him again—_oh my yes_—and found a blissfully capable impediment that was growing worthy of mounting a renewed offense against. She pieced together something of a voice and rasped, "Isn't that what you've been doing since you got here? Also, not to be an alarmist, but is that thing gonna stop getting bigger?"

His grip around her ankle withdrew but Kate couldn't follow that and slake the keenness of her need against him at the same time. Moments later she stopped, eyes widened, to feel the warmth radiating off his palm against her right thigh. It moved onward and paused just above the seat of her erotic soul. A fingertip curled beneath the fabric of her underwear and traced along the outer seam from where it gripped her ass to its termination at the innermost span of her thigh. He brushed against the folds of her outer labia like a lovely dream skirting along the fringes of her subconscious mind. Kate locked herself into perfect stillness, watching with disbelief and with her lips slightly parted as that handsome guise lowered away. _No way. But please yes way! _Shoulder blades arched against his shirt while the author lowered himself down and away to find a new home to hover before. There was no warning before he brushed his lips against the fabric of her underwear, back and forth, back and forth with a gentle 'no' that both drove her up the wall and rolled her eyes back in her head to the tune of a guttural, "God, Yes."

"What's your safety word? Say it or I stop."

"_Veritas_," Kate blurted.

Richard stopped. Not to be cruel, but because he was likely struck by the association the Latin word bore, being one which occupied Johanna Beckett's headstone. Maybe he was assuming Kate had already been thinking about it. It'd just popped into her head. The fact that it occupied a place within her mother's epitaph didn't automatically make it sad. In fact, together they might be able to lend the word a pleasing and most welcome duality by attaching a few positive connotations.

"Are you sure?"

Beckett nodded.

"Okay," he rumbled at length. He started to rise. "Good. Let's—

"_Veritas_," she said again, grasping an arm and pulling him into a sharp lean over her instead.

Castle blinked a couple of times in surprise. "Uh, yes. I heard you."

"No, _mon brute_, I'm calling _veritas_. Now. On behalf of my vagina. That," Kate paused and frowned with feigned uncertainty. "That means you have to stop teasing and fuck me, right?"

She'd never seen a man struggle so hard not to laugh. _Oh my gosh. I wish I had my cell. That is pure gold._

"You're the worst ever," Castle managed eventually, his face still red from the strain and his radiant smile still unable to be entirely contained.

"In bed, you mean? I double-dare you to prove that." Because there was only one way he could. _Whee!_

"That is blatant abuse of a safe word," her partner growled as he grabbed her hips. He jerked her closer and pressing their lower halves sublimely. "I won't forget this."

"Oh my. Abuse, was it?" Kate exhaled sharply at the feel of his palms curling with their fullness around the curves of her ass. _Oh, finally. _"Well, I showed you my version." She clutched shirt fabric and skin and dragged herself up enough to skim his lips with hers. They brushed together like the petals of overlapping flowers as she concluded, "Show me yours."


End file.
